Bahut

Monday, May 29, 2006

After all these "this is the year of Linux on the desktop", I tried again and I'm afraid that for my desktop, I'll have to wait some more...

I installed Kubuntu 5.10 (the version of Ubuntu with KDE instead of Gnome).

As an appetizer, I was greeted by a trivial detail: when starting Firefox, it complains about a missing file: /usr/share/ubuntu-artwork/home/index.html

It turns out it is just the default home page set in that firefox package for Ubuntu. Not a big deal, but nothing in the dialog points to that, so I had to search Google to find out about it. Probably should file a bug report somewhere, but then I stumbled on something more interesting.

The network configuration in Kubuntu is supposed to be done through Knetworkconf. However, it is impossible, because the buttons of the window are below the screen bottom, and the window cannot be resized and/or moved to make the buttons appear (on my 1024x768 screen).

So I thought I would take the time to enter a bug report for that. The About box says to go to bugs.kde.org. OK. I search for an already filed bug, and don't find one. To enter a new bug, I have to register. Then I am sent a password, so I have to go to my gmail acount to get the password. Then comes a wizard to file the bug, but after most information has been entered, it hangs and eventually displays the well-known

Please contact the server administrator, webmaster at kde.organd inform them of the time the error occurred, and anythingyou might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Never mind the bug report, I configured the network as usual, in the /etc/network/interfaces file and did a /etc/init.d/network restart.

Then I tried to get my Thunderbird account settings from the Windows XP install on the NTFS partition wich had a nice icon on the KDE desktop. Trying to open that gave some errors I forgot, and I had to mount the partitions the usual way with mount -t ntfs in a root shell.

When I finally got to my Thunderbird files, I discovered that Thunderbird was apparently not able to understand or import it's own settings.

So...

As much as I appreciate Linux on my servers, my experiences with Linux on the desktop keep being pretty negative, despite my insistence...

And the fonts still look horrible...

I hear Ubuntu 6.something is due to be released soon. I will give that another try.

There are Atom and RSS feeds accessible through blogger search (see at the bottom of the results page), which can return 10 or 100 entries. But that would then need to be parsed to create useful links.

So I guess I will just use that search link.

Update: after creating a del.icio.us account to add a categories box, I have seen that you can also use the del.icio.us API to list all boomarked posts. It returns XML, which would also need to be parsed. And it requires authentication. Will add another update if I end up doing something with this.

If hwclock -r gives you select() to /dev/rtc to wait for clock tick timed out you need the --directisa parameter.And you also want it used in the init scripts which call hwclock.In Debian 4 (Etch): # echo 'HWCLOCKPARS="--directisa"' >> /etc/default/rcS In Debian 3 (Sarge) you need to edit /etc/init.d/hwclock.sh to add the parameter.

Small Intranet servers spend most of their time doing nothing. And I suppose that at 3+ GHz., they use lot of power for that. Maybe they would use less power when slowed down to a more reasonable speed. I took the following from the excellent Debian HOW-TO : CPU power management page:

Friday, May 05, 2006

Long ago, I saved a link to this old article from The Register as a draft for this blog, and then forgot about it.

A year and a half later, I re-read The post-PC era is upon us and wonder whether Windows Vista will be the nail in the coffin of the powerful versatile and increasingly complex PC. Will Vista be the opportunity for all sorts of innovative products which will appeal to people who don't want to deal with a full blown PC? Between the trendy web services and various little Internet enabled appliances, powerful phones, ipods and whatnot, will the traditional PC still be as widespread in 5 years? Probably not. Things like "The Google Box" predicted by Cringely seem more likely.